


Life, Still

by somehowunbroken



Category: DCU
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, Identity Porn, Masturbation, Other, Photographs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-12
Updated: 2012-07-12
Packaged: 2017-11-09 19:50:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somehowunbroken/pseuds/somehowunbroken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Tim is visiting with the pictures tonight.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life, Still

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://kink-bingo.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**kink_bingo**](http://kink-bingo.dreamwidth.org/) 2012: pictures. I present to you Tim Drake, the person this prompt was invented for. Many thanks to [](http://ariadne83.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ariadne83**](http://ariadne83.dreamwidth.org/) and [](http://shinysylver.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**shinysylver**](http://shinysylver.dreamwidth.org/) for audiencing and betaing and generally listening to me talk about Tim and his literal love for photographs.

Tim always developed his own pictures.

In the beginning, he had told his parents that he didn’t trust anyone else with them, that some clumsy clerk might drop his negatives or overexpose them or cut the prints wrong. He was convincing; of course he was. His parents patted him on the head and installed a darkroom and never once suspected the truth.

The truth was that Tim’s darkroom had always been filled with prints of various sizes and styles in different shades and poses, but always focusing on the same subjects: Batman and Robin. He’d hung pocket-sized shots of Robin tumbling from a building beside black-and-white posters of Batman emerging from the shadows; the bright yellow of Robin’s cape against the night sky contrasted nicely with the way the streetlights had reflected off of Batman’s cowl. There were a hundred other shots just like those, a thousand, and nobody ever suspected anything as long as Tim produced the occasional framed photo of a flower or a tree.

The photos have stayed with Tim no matter how much around him has changed. He’s no longer a child looking at Batman’s world and wishing desperately for a way in. He has traded his camera for his cape, his nights secretly following Robin for nights where he’s expected to follow Batman. So much has changed, but the pictures… the pictures are always there.

Tim is visiting with the pictures tonight. He had offered to turn them all over to Bruce when he’d started as Robin; Tim will never know why Bruce declined, but he’s had more and more reasons to be glad for it over the years. At first, it had just been a reminder of what life used to be like for him, but now… now it’s something else entirely.

Tim locks his bedroom door and makes sure the latches on the windows are shut tightly before hanging the curtains just so. He stands in the middle of the room for a minute, looking around and listening carefully, but after sixty seconds of careful observation, Tim is reasonably certain that he’s alone.

The photo album is under the bed, and Tim pulls it out and sets it on the mattress without opening the cover. He doesn’t bother changing into pajamas when he strips off his clothing. Experience has taught him that it only makes a bigger mess later if he puts anything on at this point. He does grab a towel from his bathroom, though. He spreads it across the top of his bed, up near the pillows, and tries to sit as close to the center of it as he can.

The book is heavy and thick, and Tim takes a moment to trace the lines in the cover. The leather is well-worn; it’s not quite cracking, but the book definitely isn’t new. Tim smiles as he reaches for the corner and pulls the book open.

The first picture in the album is the first one that he had ever looked at and thought _oh, yes, that_. It’s from well before the pictures were anything more than a child’s fascination with local heroes. In it, Robin is standing on the edge of the old Tower Apartments building at 45th and Byrne, hands on his hips, cape flowing in the wind. His head is tipped back, mouth open, and if Tim closes his eyes, he can still hear Robin laughing right before he dove towards the street below.

The facing picture is from later on. It’s Robin again, the same but different. He’s on the same building, but instead of the bright joy that the first Robin had radiated, this Robin has his arms crossed across his chest, one hip cocked out, and is smirking down at the street. The differences in the costume are minimal at best, but nobody who spent more than a few minutes looking at the two photos would think that they were of the same boy.

Tim has spent far more than a few minutes looking at the pictures.

He turns the page and is greeted by two of his favorite photos. On the left is Nightwing, caught mid-flight, grinning in the moment before he catches his line; the left shows the Red Hood, helmet on the ground by his feet, face completely hidden in shadow but for the cigarette hanging from his lips.

(Tim's other secret, the one that's more well-kept than the photos themselves are anymore, is that he hadn't stopped when he became Robin. Bruce hadn’t asked him to stop so much as he had just expected it; since he hadn’t specifically been told he wasn’t allowed, Tim had taken it as a tacit sort of permission.)

Tim spends a few minutes looking at Nightwing and the Red Hood; they’re beautiful, striking as always, but those photos aren’t what he’s looking for tonight. He flips the pages again and again, passing Batman and Robin and Nightwing and the Red Hood quickly until he sees it: a flash of purple in the corner of a frame. He slows down and traces the outline of Spoiler’s cape. There’s more of her in the next shot, but it’s not until three photos later that she’s entirely in the frame. She’s squatting on the top of the Hyson building, looking into the night, and over the course of the next five shots, Batgirl melts out of the shadows and lays her hand on Spoiler’s shoulder.

Tim bites his lower lip and turns the page again, tracing his fingers over the page as Spoiler stands and spins. Her laugh isn’t in the photo, but it’s sounding in Tim’s memory, just as he can still hear the whisper of cloth as she pulls her hood down. Spoiler’s hair is bright against Batgirl’s shoulder, and then against her face as Spoiler’s hands reach around her head and unfasten the catches keeping her cowl in place. The cowl opens just enough for Tim to see Batgirl’s smile, and then Spoiler ducks in and kisses Batgirl square on the mouth.

There’s nobody home, Tim reassures himself as he touches the photo, safe behind its glossy plastic cover. There’s nobody here to see him reach down and grip himself tightly. He gives himself a slow stroke and flips the page, groaning long and low when he sees the way Batgirl’s gauntlets disappear into Spoiler’s hair, and how Spoiler’s hand cups Batgirl’s hip through her uniform.

Both of them are skilled fighters, but right now, that’s the furthest thing from Tim’s mind. Right now he’s focused more on the way he’d wanted to find a route into the next building as he was shooting this; he’d wanted a different angle, a better one, but he’d been too entranced by the women to move. He’d snapped photo after photo as Batgirl had pulled Spoiler’s uniform away from her neck and kissed her there until there had been a mark. He couldn’t help but keep going when Spoiler had tangled her fingers in Batgirl’s belt and pulled her in tightly.

Tim moans and lets his head fall back, stroking himself roughly as his mind fills with picture after picture of Batgirl and Spoiler, the photos he’d snapped and the ones that are only in his head blending and flashing by more and more quickly: Spoiler’s hand slipping up Batgirl’s tunic, Batgirl’s thigh between Spoiler’s legs, the way Spoiler had gasped when Batgirl bit the space where neck met shoulder, the barely-there sound Batgirl had let slip when Spoiler had done something with her hand that Tim hadn’t quite been able to see…

Tim comes with a twitch of his shoulders, hunching over and opening his eyes to see the colors blurring in front of him, eggplant on black, the flash of the Bat on Batgirl’s chest, bright hair and smooth skin and lips catching as the women fix their costumes and finally part. He gives himself a moment to squeeze his eyes shut and pant before steadying his breathing and opening his eyes.

It only takes a few minutes to clean up; he has to wipe down the glossy covers on the photos, but other than that, the mess is only on the towel. Tim slides off the bed and folds the towel before tossing it into his hamper, then slips into his pajamas before kneeling to tuck the album beneath his bed again. A carefully-applied sock draped across half of the cover makes it look like something that’s been forgotten without being specifically hidden, and Tim is climbing between his sheets a moment later.

Tim dreams about eggplant purple and Dick’s smile, about white streaks of hair and the way Cass smiles and the brightest shade of yellow, and he sleeps soundly.


End file.
